


A Friend Who Bleeds is a Friend You Eat

by Zeona



Series: Can You Recall The Sequence of Events Right? [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Brain Damage, Eating Disorders, Emotional, Episode: s03e06 Dolce, Hannibal Lecter is a Cannibal, Head Injury, Hurt No Comfort, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, because being a cannibal is messed up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:47:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22974997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeona/pseuds/Zeona
Summary: Hannibal cuts into Will's head in Season 3, Ep 6 (Dolce).This time, there's no one there to stop him in time. Not quite.
Series: Can You Recall The Sequence of Events Right? [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1651069
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	1. This Was Planned (wasn't it?)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this all in one go. Unbetaed. Sorry if its super messed up but I needed some hurt/comfort and brain damaged Will fics.  
> Couldn't find any so here I am in a sudden writing frenzy to do it myself.  
> This goes very gory and nothing is nice.  
> Will is pretty beaten up here but here we go!  
> Enjoy.  
> Or don't.

Hannibal has always been a man who thought things through. Oh, certainly he is impulsive and likes things to be unexpected and sudden. It makes the game interesting. Challenges the chess master in himself. Every move he makes is calculated and choreographed even in the face of uncertainty. To watch all that he has laid into his volatile script start to unfold somehow soothes the hungry creature in his chest. Always the actor and the magician and the audience all at once. 

Even as Hannibal straps Will into the chair, he has a plan. When it comes to Will Graham, his plans are always fluid and at the same time, set in stone. It is the quiet stream, battering against Graham’s legs to gently guide him towards his intended becoming. It wears away at his resolve ever so slowly but surely. It is the rock, hidden beneath the surface of said stream, stumbling Graham and cutting him when he falls, threatening to break open his skull. It is his salvation when the stream roars with the thunder of rain, pulling him far far away and the only anchor he has are the bloodstained rocks that were once all too ready to make him bleed.

Hannibal sets the table. It is refreshing to return to a false sense of normality. To arrange the plates and utensils just so. It feels like home. Will watches him with half-lidded eyes and slow pupils. Hannibal puts a hand on his shoulder in a fruitless attempt to ease his subdued anxiety. Then he turns to the kitchen before returning with a bowl in hand.

He sets down the parsley and thyme broth before Will. His beautiful creature is dazed and blurred, breath coming out in pants thanks to adrenaline but too drugged to do much more than that. He sits next to Will who gazes at him, eyes unfocussed.

“I don’t indulge much in regret, but I am sorry to be leaving Italy.” He waits for a response, though he doesn’t expect one. When nothing but air comes out of Will’s lips, he picks up the spoon and ladles a little bit of soup.

“There were things in the Palazzo Capponi I would have liked to read.” He blows the spoonful of broth so that it isn’t scalding hot. Cupping a hand beneath the spoon to catch any stray drips, he lifts it to Will’s lips. “I would have liked to play the clavier.” He spoons the soup into the warm, waiting and resisting mouth of Will Graham. “And perhaps compose,” he ends his sentence as Will pulls his head away, the motion jerky and uncontrolled.

Dropping his hand, Hannibal swills his plans in his mind like wine in a glass. Savouring the scent before the taste. What would Will taste like? “I would have liked to show you Florence, Will.” The what-ifs of Will’s betrayal still stings in his mouth. His forgiveness is certain and holds no doubt or lie and yet…

_“You and I have begun to blur.”_

_“Isn’t that how you found me? Every crime of yours feels like one I’m guilty of.”_

Who knows what Hannibal feels now? He is hungry. For understanding or simply for Will Graham he does not know. He has regrets, certainly. Mixed emotions. To eat is to consume and destroy what had once existed into something else. To eat is to love. 

“Soup isn’t very good…” Will murmurs. Hannibal smiles. His sweet, sweet, _bitter_ boy. Always with something to say.

“It's a parsley and thyme infusion, and more for my sake than yours,” Hannibal replies. Would Will’s blood absolve him of his sins, or castigae him? The first lamb of God, slaughtered in the Garden of Eden to condemn, or the Shepherd of the Sheep, put down to save his flock? “Have another sip,” he says instead of explaining himself.

Sometimes, despite being in the quiet of his own mind, he cannot explain even to himself his own motives. Perhaps he has none. He only has plans. He knows that what he will do will be irreversible. It doesn’t mean it isn’t irresistible. 

The hunger isn’t just in his lips. It digs into his every step, gnaws at his belly and chews at his temple. The desire for more than just plain human interaction. No, that is dull. Will is more than that. He has transcended to more than just bags of rude, insensitive meat, unseasoned until they meet the blade of Hannibal’s cleaver.

Will Graham, the object of his obsession. He had known in the first few days when he first met Will (when he was the cold, impassable ‘Dr Lecter’ and then the chesty rumble of ‘Hannibal’, and after, the ringing bell for vengeance of both) that it might come to this: the great detective, the empath and socially inept, seasoned. Head on his plate. How would Will be changed by this? 

“Let that circulate,” Hannibal purrs, drawing away the empty spoon from Will’s lips. The drugs in the broth are working rapidly. Too much in the whole bowl of broth for Will to safely eat but a few spoonfuls will do the work for Hannibal. Already, Will’s breaths are slowing down. 

He doesn’t know this, but the drugs are working to numb Will. Not just to make his mind slow, though that will certainly help diffuse the struggles Will would have definitely put up otherwise. And how he would struggle, his boy. 

If Hannibal were the apex predator, Will is the apex prey. He is not the quivering bunny his empathic mind would like to imply, with his quivering lashes behind large lenses. Certainly not the darting doe, shaky on newborn legs. No, Will Graham is a stag. The predator as much as he is the prey. 

He will gore the lion at risk of tangling himself with a corpse and trapping himself in a death trap. Open to other predators to feast on vulnerable prey that might otherwise not have been.

Hannibal never intended it to be this way, but it has. ‘Quite poetic, is it not,’ Hannibal muses as he inserts another needle into Will’s arm. Eating the one being that mattered to him was his becoming. Was the beginning of Hannibal the Cannibal. It would once again be the end of him. Oh, no, he would not stop his feasting of human flesh - not so drastic as that. And at the same time, however...

_“Do you believe you could change me? The way I’ve changed you?”_

_“I already did.”_

“Are we expecting company?” Will slurs. Hannibal glances at the plate and glass placed on the other side of the table. 

“Uncle Jack’s on his way. I have something special prepared for him.” Will’s chin droops to his chest and he mumbles something. Hannibal doesn’t bother to ask him to repeat it. “You cannot stop what has been set into motion, Will. Perhaps this is what the higher powers have intended it to be. You cannot stop an omnipotent god. You certainly cannot stop me.”

The devil comes when his name is called and when Hannibal rises to get ready the last pieces of the puzzle, he sees from the window an imposing figure darkening the front of Sogliato’s home. He crawls beneath the table and waits, Will’s breath heavy above him.

The sacrifice has been prepared. Will his Isaac be saved?


	2. I Forgive You (Do you, me?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More gore. Skip to the end notes if you're too squeamish.

“I've taken the liberty of giving you something to help you relax,” Hannibal says, pushing the blade of his knife through something on his cutting board. Spices or meat, Jack can’t tell. “Won't be able to do much more than chew, but that's all you'll need to do.”

Dread fills him and Jack kicks himself internally that he can do nothing but sit here and watch. Is he here to die? His end met on Hannibal’s plate? Or is it Will who is to be Hannibal's next meal? He glances at the table. The latter, he thinks, is most likely.

He should have followed Will. Stopped him before it came to this. Hannibal continues talking and prepping as if they were back in Baltimore before it had all come to a head. “I didn't have an opportunity to ask you during our last encounter, but did you enjoy the exhibition? A different kind of ‘Evil Minds Museum’.”

Jack should have killed him then. Ended it there once and for all. But before now, he hadn’t been driven to catch Hannibal. Not like before. Not here in France. He had just been here for Will - Will was supposed to be the one to catch Hannibal. To kill him. Not Jack. Yet, here they are.

“Not that different," Jack grits his teeth. Hannibal nods, seemingly satisfied by his answer. “We were supposed to sit down together at your house in Baltimore, just the three of us.” Jack’s eyes fear up suddenly, filled with nervous trepidation. It was supposed to end there. Will was supposed to kill Hannibal. Hannibal was supposed to be brought to justice. So many suppositions. So many endings and none of them completed. The books opened and burned in Hannibal’s fireplace.

“You were to be the guest of honour,” Hannibal says. There’s something almost bitter and salty in his voice. Jack glances at Will. Would Will have betrayed him there if their plans hadn’t been rushed? Or would they have had Hannibal in cuffs on the floor or with a bullet through his head?

“But the menu was all wrong.” Will’s voice is heavy, almost lethargic.

“Yes, it was.” Hannibal’s smile is firm and he turns around, lifting a box up onto the table. “Jack was the first to suggest getting inside your head.” Hannibal pulls a handle from the box and fixes a saw head to the top. Jack’s pupils shrink, eyes widening. Could Hannibal possibly- no. Surely not. Will’s eyes are stuck on Hannibal, his expression frozen between fear and sorrow.

“Now, we both have the opportunity to chew quite literally what we've only chewed figuratively.” Hannibal looks at Will, something undecipherable passing across his face before he walks to Will’s side.

The fear constricts around his lungs and Hannibal’s name passes Jack’s lips in a whisper. The whirring of the saw seems intent to drown Jack out. “Stop.” The saw moves impossibly slowly, inching closer to Will’s head. He can see that the man is dazed. His mind hasn’t yet processed fully what is about to happen. Hannibal ignores the following, more frantic protest and presses the saw to Will’s forehead.

The drill cuts through flesh, drowning out Jack’s screaming protests. Will doesn’t yet know what’s going on. The drugs are too heavy in his system and all his body can do is jerk against the restraints. 

The blood is thick, flowing heavily and rapidly down Will’s head. His pupils trumble, eyes unsteady in their sockets as he glances up through the blood at Hannibal. His mouth opens, gasping for air.Jack screams and thrashes as much as the paralytic allows him to. He’s compensating for how still Will is. Hannibal is calm. An impassive wall as the saw cuts through and past the bone. When the saw stops, Will’s head is soaked in blood, hair damped and glued to his forehead.

Hannibal is murmuring soft reassurances, one hand heavy on the back of Will’s head. The other lifts the flap of Will’s skull.Pink, bloody brain is exposed to the air and Jack retches. The drugs ensure that he can’t turn his head to the side and bile dribbles down his chin into his lap.

Hannibal lifts the knife from the table, and ignoring Jack’s screams and crude sounds of vomit, cuts into the prefrontal lobe of Will’s brain. He removes it and sets the portion of meat - for that is all Will is now, reduced to food- into a pan set on a portable stove.

Something in Jack’s brain has seen this lobotomy and rather than the smell of brain appealing to his senses (as it once did when it was still ignorant to all that Hannibal had cooked for him) it is nauseating. He vomits until nothing can come up and he is dry heaving.

He wishes he could move now. If not to shoot Hannibal, to shoot Will and put him out of his misery. The young man in question is still very much dazed. Perhaps despite the drugs, shock has set in. Or perhaps his now ruined brain has affected him. Either way, Will seems blissfully oblivious and a dull look has entered his eyes.

Hannibal cuts the brain into three miniscule portions. He puts one onto Jack’s plate, one on his own and one on Will’s. Hannibal takes a seat and exhales slowly. He smiles tenderly at Will.

“Well, Will. Would you like the first taste?” Will blinks uncomprehendingly.

“Hannibal. Stop this. Don’t do this to him.” Jack’s pleas fall on deaf ears. 

_Wade into the quiet of the stream. And if you find yourself facing the rocks, perhaps its better to be swept away by the river._

Hannibal smiles widens, indulgent to Will’s nonexistent answer. “Here, I’ll feed it to you. You seem rather… distracted.” When Hannibal picks up the fork from Will’s plate, that’s when the tears in Jack’s eyes fall. He squeezes his eyes shut, furious at whatever, whoever has let this happen. Himself. Hannibal. Someone out there...

Will’s lips close around the fork, tongue heavy as he swallows his own brain. Hannibal watches the apple of his throat bob. The cut of meat can’t be stopped now that it’s on its way, through his oesophagus into his belly. There's no vomiting it out like he did with Abigail’s ear. 

_The teacup has been shattered._

“How is it, Will?” Hannibal’s voice is thick and raspy with emotion, strangled with so much self-restraint. 

Clear liquid balances on the tip of Graham’s left eye. It drips through the gore painted across his face, streaking the dark red with a strip of white flesh, then watery pink. Will swallows again. To rid his mouth of the taste or to savor more of it, Hannibal will never know.

“It’s delicious.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal cuts into Will's head, removes a small portion from his prefrontal lobe and feeds some of it to a very very confused Will.
> 
> Don't worry, spoiler, Will Graham doesn't die.  
> This is going to be a very very Will Graham centric series focussing on the aftermath of this.


End file.
